Send for me when the child is due. Maeve and I will come to help you.”
Cailin took the time to stop by the bench where her grandfather sat in the sunshine of the May morning. She bent to kiss his white head, and taking his hand in hers, gave it a squeeze. “Farewell, Grandfather,” she said quietly. “I will bring you the child after it is birthed.”
She and Wulf returned to their own home, and Cailin, finding more strength in herself than she would have thought, helped to seal the walls of the new barn with mud daub and wattle while Wulf worked in their fields with the servants. It was a good summer, neither too dry nor too wet. In the orchards the fruit grew round and hung heavy upon the boughs of the trees. The grain ripened slowly while the hay was cut, dried, and finally stored in the barns for the coming winter.
The cattle grew fat, their herds having increased quite sizably that spring with the birth of many calves. In the meadows the sheep had multiplied, too, and shearing time was drawing near. Cailin, sitting outside the hall one warm day, looked across the shimmering fields contentedly. For a moment it appeared as if nothing had changed, and yet everything had changed. It was a different time, and she was beginning to sense it most strongly.
One evening she and Wulf lay upon their backs on the hillside looking up at the stars. “Why do you never mention your family?” she asked him. “I am to bear your child, yet I know nothing of you.”
“You are my family,” he said, taking her hand in his.
“No!” she persisted. “What of your parents? Did you have brothers and sisters? What has happened to them? Are they in Britain?”
“My father died before I was born,” he told her. “My mother died when I was just past two. I remember neither of them. They were young, and I was their only child.”
“But who raised you?” she said. She was sorry he had no close relatives, but on the other hand it meant that he was all hers.
“Kin raised me, in my village along a river in Germania. I was passed from one relation to another like a lovable but unwanted animal. They were not unkind, mind you, but life was hard. No one really needed another mouth to feed. I left them when I was thirteen, and joined the legions. I have never been back. This is my land now, my home. You and our child are my family, Cailin. Until I found you, I was alone.”
“Until you found me,” she told him, “I was alone, too. The gods have been kind to us, Wulf.”
“Aye,” he agreed, and looking up, they saw a falling star blazing its way across the heavens.
A slave came from Anthony Porcius one day with a message. Antonia had gone into labor, and the magistrate was at a loss. He wrote that Antonia’s women seemed helpless—although they should not be, Cailin thought. He begged that Cailin come to the villa to aid them. Wulf Ironfist was not happy about it, but Cailin did not think in light of the magistrate’s kindness to them that she could refuse.
“We will pad the cart out, and I will travel in complete comfort,” she told her husband. “Our child is not due for another few weeks. Even if we go slowly, I can be there by day’s end.”
Anthony Porcius was grateful when Cailin arrived. Antonia was still in labor and was having great difficulty. “She sent all the women who had always been with her away after Quintus’s death, and replaced them with a group of fluttery girls. I do not understand why,” he told Cailin, answering her unspoken question.
“It probably had something to do with making a new start,” Cailin suggested. “Perhaps the other women, who were with her when she was married to Sextus Scipio and to my cousin, made her sad. They were only reminders of all she had lost, of better times now gone.”
“Perhaps you are right, Cailin Drusus,” he answered.
“You have asked me to come, and I came,” Cailin replied, “but how will Antonia feel about my presence? I will help her, of course, but I am no expert. Why did she have no midwife among her staff?”
He shrugged helplessly. “I do not know.”
“I have never birthed a child before, Anthony Porcius, but I know what must be done. Antonia will be able to help me,